18 Guide to Whales, Porpoises, and Dolphins. 
meshes of the sieve formed by the whalebone, and the food remains 
to be swallowed. Owing to the small quantity and inferior quality 
of their whalebone, the comparatively limited amount of oil-pro- 
ducing fat, and the difficulty of capturing them by the old methods, 
owing to their great speed, these Whales until the last thirty years 
were not objects of pursuit by whalers ; but since the introduction 
of steam-vessels and of explosive harpoons fired from guns, 
Rorqual-fisheries have been established on the coast of Finmark, in 
Shetland, and in Ireland, all under the management of Norwegians, 
where many hundreds are killed every summer, their bodies being 
towed to the shore for the purpose of flensing. 
Four species inhabit the British seas, viz.: The BuurE RorquaL 
(Balenoptera sibbaldi, or B. musculus, fig. 4), the largest of all 
known animals, attaining a length of 80, or perhaps sometimes 
85, feet; the Common Rorquat (B. musculus, or B. physalus, 
fig. 7), from 60 to 70 feet long when full grown; the NorTHERN, 
or Rupoupnt’s, Rorquan (B. borealis), not exceeding 50 feet in 
length; and the Lesser Rorequan (BL. rostrata, or B. acuto-rostrata), 
never exceeding 30 feet in length. 
Rorquals are met with in almost all seas, and nearly all the 
individuals examined so closely resemble one or other of the 
above-mentioned species that some naturalists incline to the belief 
that there are but four kinds, each having a wide, or almost 
cosmopolitan, range. The Lesser Rorqual, at any rate, has, how- 
ever, several distinct local races. 
In the genus Balenoptera the neck is longer than in Balena, 
and the seven vertebre are all free. 
No specimen of the Blue Rorqual is at present exhibited in 
the Gallery. 
Of the various species of Whalebone Whales the Common 
Rorqual (fig. 7) is the one most frequently met with in the seas 
round the British Isles, and often enters the Mediterranean. 
Adult specimens vary between sixty and seventy feet in length, 
and the species is only surpassed in size by the Blue Rorqual; its 
food consists of crustaceans and fishes up to the size of herrings. 
This Whale produces but a comparatively small quantity of oil, 
and its whalebone, being short and having little elasticity, is of 
scarcely any commercial value. Together with other Rorquals, it 
is, however, now caught off the coast of Finmark, as weil as off 
the Shetlands, and the small island Inishskea, off the west coast 
of County Mayo, Ireland, where there are special whaling- 
